Wordy is a new iOS app that offers a unique way to learn English. This app automatically translates and defines unknown words while watching your favorite movies and TV shows. Wordy has over 500,000 titles available, including popular series like HBO's The Penguin and Disney+'s new show Agatha All Along.
Created by Sándor Bogyó, a 23-year-old indie developer from Budapest, the app was born out of frustration with looking up phrases that aren't in your native language while watching English shows. After my experience with Language Reactor, a Chrome extension similar to Wordy, I realized the need for a mobile app that would allow me to easily use my phone while watching TV or using my computer.
When a user selects an episode from Wordy's library, AI analyzes the subtitles, extracts each word, and lemmatizes it. Using your phone's microphone, a custom speech recognition model identifies spoken sentences from audio from your TV or computer. This allows the app to find and track where you are in an episode and scroll down the transcript to help highlight specific words that may be difficult for non-native English speakers. When a new word appears, you can instantly turn to your phone to see the translation.
Additionally, there is a summary page for each episode, allowing you to see all the words at once. Classified by difficulty level: Advanced English, Advanced English, Upper Intermediate, Intermediate, Beginner, and Beginner. Wordy also gives you the option to save words to your library and practice them later using digital flashcards.
Image credit: Wordy
Wordy uses a combination of proprietary and third-party AI models. Bogyó told TechCrunch that he leverages TMDB, the largest open movie database, for movie and series data, as well as OpenSubtitles.com via API, which provides the most accurate and reliable subtitles. I explained that I found out that it would be provided.
During testing, I opened the app on my phone while watching Netflix's popular TV show “Wednesdays” on my laptop. Wardy pointed to terms such as “plague,” “outrageous,” and “séance,” which are more advanced vocabulary that may be unknown to newcomers to the language. I found the translation accurate and easy to understand.
One caveat is that it is currently only available in English, whereas rival Language Reactor supports all major languages. Bogyó assured us that they are working on adding more languages. He plans to integrate Spanish into the app in November, followed by French and German in the coming months.
“I prefer to maintain quality rather than rush the process, so I take my time to ensure each language integration meets standards for accuracy and user experience.” he said.
The app costs $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year. The Android version will be released in November.